The light filtering through the cracks in the shrine was soft and golden, a calm haze resting over shattered wood and dust-strewn stone. Yin Shuang opened her eyes slowly, her breath steady, measured.
For a moment, her senses struggled to reconnect with reality. The stillness of the shrine was so quiet compared to the endless ringing of phantom blades in the realm of the sword. The silence here was too real. No distant voice. No sparring figure. Just the musty scent of earth and rot.
She saw her rusty sword lying on the floor, dull and unremarkable. Yet the moment she'd first laid eyes on it, something had stirred within her. It wasn't just the strange voice that had called her to it; there was a deeper pull, a quiet recognition. Like her, the sword was forgotten, overlooked. Ordinary. Abandoned. The resemblance was almost tragic.
She leaned down and reached for it, her fingers wrapping naturally around the worn hilt, as if her hand remembered what her mind had nearly forgotten.
It was exactly the same. Still pitted with age, its surface dull, as if it had long forgotten what it meant to gleam in sunlight.
And yet it felt exactly like the blade she'd wielded for the past three years in that endless silver realm. Its weight, its balance, the subtle hum of power coiled deep within—everything was the same.
She knew this was the Peerless Sword.
The woman had spoken of it only once, near the end of Yin's training.
"The techniques you now bear… were once known as the Peerless Swordplay. They were not created. They were discovered—drawn from the echoes of a sword's perfect motion. Few in this world can comprehend them. Fewer still can wield them."
Yin had no illusions about her mastery. She had barely scratched the surface. But three years under the tutelage of that mysterious woman had carved new instinct into her very bones.
She stood slowly, the sword sliding effortlessly into the makeshift cloth scabbard she had fashioned weeks ago.
Then she noticed him.
Still there.
Still sprawled across the floor of the shrine—face-down in the dust, arms askew, breath shallow but steady.
The lowlife scum of a senior disciple from the Heavenly Radiance Sect. The one who had tried to chase her down. The one who had thought her weak.
Yin's expression remained neutral, but her eyes narrowed slightly.
He had been an overwhelming presence. A threat. A reminder of her place in the Sect's hierarchy. She remembered the sound of his laughter when she was given cleaning duty after long missions, his dismissive comments behind her back, the way his friends sneered when she passed.
But now?
Now he looked… small.
And more importantly—
He hadn't moved.
The deep, echoing toll of the timekeeping gong rang out in the distance, two hours until midnight. She did the math quickly. From the moment she'd left her quarters until he'd ambushed her, only three hours had gone by.
Yin froze.
Three years in that sword realm. Yet only three hours had passed in the outside world?
She let out a slow, almost inaudible breath, realization dawning like morning mist.
Time doesn't flow the same within the sword's realm.
Her hand tightened around the blade's hilt.
Three years of cultivation. Three years of Peerless Swordplay. Gained in the time it took for one man to get knocked out cold.
She stepped lightly toward him, her footsteps silent, as if her body instinctively rejected clumsy noise now.
She paused beside his prone form.
He had fallen badly, half on his side, one arm pinned awkwardly. His breathing was shallow but not labored. No visible injuries, aside from the purple swelling where her fist had cracked into his jaw three hours ago.
No doubt he'd awaken with bruises and a headache.
But that wasn't enough.
Yin tilted her head slightly.
She had learned discipline in the sword realm. Control. Calm. But some habits, some injustices, lingered deeper than even the cleanest cut.
And this scum?
He had mocked her for years. Had watched her struggle through training, whispered behind her back, and dismissed her as nothing more than a pitiful orphan raised out of pity by the Sect. Tonight he had gone too far.
She turned to leave.
Then she paused after a few steps.
Her brow furrowed slightly.
She didn't need to do it.
She had no reason to do it.
But that's not the point.
She turned back and walked toward him.
With one swift motion, she reared her leg back and slammed her boot into the center of his back with a bone-rattling CRACK.
Luo Jian let out a strangled yelp, jolting awake in a gasp of pain, but Yin was already walking away. She didn't even look back.
Luo Jian walked with a limp for the rest of his life.
No one ever dared ask what had happened in the shrine, he refused to speak of it. Some whispered that he had angered a spirit. Others believed he'd been cursed by an ancient formation buried beneath the stones.
But those who caught a glimpse of him when Yin Shuang entered a room noticed he never made eye contact with her again.
Yin slipped into the forest, her breath slow, her steps fluid. Her body no longer moved like a mere disciple's. There was grace now. Control.
She could feel the difference with every breath she took.
Her cultivation had deepened to the Qi Convergence stage. She could sense the Qi in the air—how it flowed, how it gathered. Her core pulsed with clarity.
And the Peerless Swordplay was no longer merely knowledge, it was instinct.
She recalled the phantom blades raining down in spirals. The endless forms and reversals. The deceptive movements that concealed lethal counterattacks. Her body responded faster now, as though each limb had memorized a library of techniques.
But the woman's warning echoed in her mind:
"Never reveal the sword's secret unless death is certain. This world has eyes that see too much. If they know what you carry, they will come."
Yin nodded to herself.
She would not reveal her new strength.
Not yet.
The Heavenly Radiance Sect might smile in the sun, but beneath the light—there were shadows. She had seen enough of them to know.
And now?
She would walk them carefully.
By the time Yin reached the outskirts of the sect's lower valley, dusk was beginning to settle across the sky, casting orange streaks through the bamboo forest.
Her robes were tattered, her blade wrapped in cloth and slung casually across her back.
To the guards watching from the path ahead, she looked no different than a returning scout. They glanced at her, vaguely puzzled by her appearance, but made no move to stop her.
Yin nodded slightly, slipping past without a word.
Let them think she had been on an errand.
Let them assume she was still weak.
As she passed beneath the stone archway bearing the Sect's crest, she looked up at the grand walls of the Heavenly Radiance Sect—the place that had never truly accepted her, that trained her hands but ignored her name.
But she wasn't the same girl anymore.
Not by a long shot.
She reached up and touched the hilt of the rusted sword behind her back. To anyone else, it was an old weapon—not worth notice.
But to Yin Shuang, it was everything.
Three years of training. A legacy of swordplay that no one else alive remembered. A power that must remain hidden until the right moment.
She stepped through the gates without a sound, her face calm, her heart steady.